floating, all her enthusiasm for life and for the hero who
came to awaken her to life and to love. In Brunnhilde and Elizabeth all
the humanity she represented--and she thought she was a fairly human
person--was on the stage. But Elsa? That was the one part she was
dissatisfied with. There were people who liked her Elsa. Oh, her Elsa
had been greatly praised. Perhaps she was mistaken, but at the bottom of
her heart she could not but feel that her Elsa was a failure. The truth
was that she had never understood the story. It began beautifully, the
beginning was wonderful--the maiden whom everyone was persecuting, who
would be put to death if some knight did not come to her aid. She could
sing the dream--that she understood. Then the silver-clad knight who
comes from afar, down the winding river, past thorpe and town, to
release her from those who were plotting against her. But afterwards?
This knight who wanted to marry her, and who would not tell his name.
What did it mean? And the celebrated duet in the nuptial chamber--what
did it mean? It was beautiful music--but what did it mean? Could anyone
tell her? She had often asked, but no one had ever been able to tell
her.

She knew very well the meaning of the duet, when Siegfried adventures
through the fire-surrounded mountain and wakes Brunnhilde with a kiss.
That duet meant the joy of life, the rapture of awakening to the
adventure of life, the delight of the swirling current of ephemeral
things. And the duet that she was going to sing; she knew what that
meant too. It meant the desire to possess. Desire finding a barrier to
complete possession in the flesh would break off the fleshly lease, and
enter the great darkness where alone was union and rest.

But she could not discover the idea in the "Lohengrin" duet? Senta she
understood, and she thought she understood Kundry. She had not yet begun
to study the part. But Elsa? Suddenly the thought that, if she was going
to Dulwich, she must get up, struck her like a spur, and she sprang out
of bed, and laying her finger on the electric bell she kept the button
pressed till Merat arrived breathless.

"Merat, I shall get up at once; prepare my bath, and tell the coachman I
shall be ready to start in twenty minutes."

"Twenty minutes? Mademoiselle is joking."

"No, I am not ... in twenty minutes--half-an-hour at the most."

"It would be impossible for me to dress you in less than three-quarters
of an hour."

"I shall be